


Homescreen

by hallelujah99



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Cell Phones, Fluff, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, T. J. Kippen & Amber Are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 19:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19470796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallelujah99/pseuds/hallelujah99
Summary: Cyrus decides to start pulling a prank on TJ where he takes his phone when he's not looking and changes his homescreen picture. A harmless prank-but he would have never guessed where it would lead him.





	Homescreen

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from a random prompt generator haha. The very cursed swingset scene never happened.
> 
> Enjoy!

It all starts at 12:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. TJ, Cyrus, Andi, Buffy, and Jonah were finishing up their lunch in the cafeteria. “I’m going to go back up and grab a cookie, does anyone want anything?” TJ asked the table. “I’ll take some more napkins.” Buffy tells him. The rest of the table shakes their heads and TJ bounces away from the table towards the food line, when Cyrus notices something. TJ has left his phone sitting face up, unlocked on the table.

He and TJ had used each others phones before numerous times, knew each others passcodes, and were generally pretty comfortable with each other, so he doesn’t think too much of grabbing TJ’s phone. Buffy gives him a side eye “Are you snooping?” she asks under her breath. She sounds a little excited, but Cyrus isn’t grabbing the phone to be invasive, he has a much better idea.

He quickly takes an awkward, ugly selfie, then sets it as TJ’s homescreen. Buffy laughs at him and shakes her head before turning back to the conversation between Andi and Jonah. Cyrus joins in as well, doing his best to act as casually as possible when TJ returns, hands some napkins to Buffy, takes a seat, and picks up his phone. Cyrus holds in a laugh as TJ squints his eyes in confusion at his phone for a second before rolling his eyes. “Really Cyrus?” he shakes his head and laughs. “You’re something else.” Cyrus laughs and TJ shows the phone to the whole table, who join in.

“Why would you even take a bad picture of yourself and leave it on TJ’s phone? He could post it!” Jonah says. “Yeah, but he wont.” Cyrus says confidently. “Besides, there’s no such thing as a bad picture of Cyrus.” TJ smiles and ruffles Cyrus’s hair. Andi, Buffy, and even Jonah all shoot each other looks-how can these two be so oblivious?! But, the bell rings and they all leave the table, the prank and the flirting quickly forgotten.

That night, TJ FaceTimes Cyrus for “math help,” but the notebooks and pencils are quickly forgotten as the two start chatting about their days. “-anyway, then I was walking Lily and she started playing in some puddles and oh my god I got the cutest pictures ever.” Cyrus always thought it was so cute how TJ’s face lit up whenever he talked about his dog. Just one of many cute things about him. TJ continues “And I mayyyy have set one of the pictures as my new homescreen.” Cyrus plays mock-offended, when truthfully he’s surprised TJ didn’t change his homescreen right away. “Why would you do that?! I took such a beautiful picture for you!” TJ laughs and the butterflies it gives Cyrus are something he’s still somehow not used to. “I change it a lot! Like just to whatever pictures I take that make me happy or remind me of happy things. Not that you don’t make me happy…” TJ’s blush is evident, but Cyrus tells himself it must be because he just accidentally talked himself into a corner. He changes the subject quickly, afraid if he stays on topic, he’ll say something he might regret. “Well you’ll have to send me those pictures of Lily, since they’re supposedly so cute.”

It’s about three weeks later, TJ is in Cyrus’s basement with him, playing ping pong. They’ve forgotten who’s winning at this point, but are having fun just casually rallying and chatting. “Ugh, did I tell you the stupid crap Amber did the other day?” TJ loved complaining about his sister. “Enlighten me.” “So my mom was leaving and she told me to mow the lawn and Amber to do the dishes. Which, first of all, is stupid and sexist and she always does crap like that, because I can do dishes! Amber can push a lawn mower! But anyway, I mowed the lawn but Amber didn’t do the dishes and when my mom came back she was all like ‘it’s all TJ’s stuff! I got my stuff out of there, he should have to do his own! Like, excuse me?! I just mowed the lawn, and I had nothing to do with the grass growing, you just gotta do things sometimes!” “Trust me, I know Amber can be a real piece of work sometimes.” Cyrus agrees with TJ, or so he thought. TJ puts his paddle down and lets the ping pong ball fly behind him. “Hey, that’s my sister you’re talking about, you better watch what you say about her.” He’s clearly joking, but there’s a seriousness there as well. Cyrus has never quite understood the sibling dynamic, though he was starting to. “You were just complaining about her!” “Yeah, but she’s my sister. I get to complain about her, not you.” Cyrus rolls his eyes but its what he expected TJ to say. “Alright, I get it, you love your sister.” “No, she’s annoying and I hate her guts.” TJ says simply as he serves the ping pong ball. Cyrus just laughs.

Not long after, TJ excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and Cyrus notices his phone sitting on a side table. His plan comes to him instantly, he just hopes he can pull it off in time…

He grabs TJ’s phone, unlocks it and goes to Amber’s Instagram, quickly screenshotting her most recent post, a very “candid” picture of her smiling while holding a teddy bear. Perfect. He quickly adds the text “I love my sister!” and “Luckiest brother alive J” over the picture before swiftly setting it as his background. He sets the phone down and walks away just in time to appear casual as TJ comes back into the room.

“You’re almost out of soap in that bathroom, took me forever to get it to pump.” TJ tells Cyrus as he enters. Cyrus thanks his lucky stars that he was able to pull his prank off, yet again. “Oh, thanks for telling me, I’ll go grab some more right now so I don’t forget.” TJ nods and heads to pick up his phone to entertain himself while Cyrus is gone. Cyrus turns to look at exactly the right moment to see TJ roll his eyes and groan. “Alright, funny guy. You got me again.” He’s laughing though, Cyrus knows he thinks it’s funny, too. “I’m not keeping this one for any period of time, just so you know”

Cyrus pretends to be hurt for a minute before running to get a spare bottle of soap. When he returns, the prank is all but forgotten, and the boys continue to play ping pong and chat.

Nearly six weeks later, Cyrus is at the park, swinging, of course, when TJ approaches behind him. “Underdog?” he calls out, altering Cyrus to his presence. “Noooo!!!” Cyrus replies, quickly setting his feet down and dragging. TJ laughs and takes the swing beside him. “So, what’d going on, huh? Feeling bad about something?” Cyrus shrugs “A little.” “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Yes.” Cyrus replies, surprising himself a bit.

“It’s just that…sometimes I feel like no matter what I do I’m going to be an outsider to most people. I feel like, I don’t know, I’m comfortable with myself when I’m alone, at least somewhat, but when I’m out in the world, I’m so worried about how people see me. I think people think I’m wimpy or…not manly enough.” “I’m so sorry you’re feeling like that Cyrus. I really am. But I want you to know that anyone who looks at you and thinks there’s something wrong with you is crazy, is okay? And just because you’re not athletic or whatever doesn’t mean you’re not a man. I know I used to kinda think that way, honestly, but I think that’s a load of crap. That’s not what being a man is about.” “Then what is it about?” “I don’t know, honestly. I’m trying to figure that out too I guess. Figure out what a man should be and what kinda man I wanna be.” The conversation continues, and just halfway in, both boys can feel that this is the deepest conversation either has ever had, with anyone. Each boy is also feeling the fact that in their deep discussion of gender and society and identity, he is leaving out one very important fact about himself, his own gayness. (Of course, neither knows that it’s mutual). Nonetheless, the conversation is deep, meaningful and feels transformative.

After a while, the conversation terminates naturally and they sit in reflective silence for a bit before TJ finally pipes up “Do you wanna go over on the jungle gym? Forget about everything and just be a kid again for a bit?” Cyrus gleefully agreed and they head over, chasing each other around the equipment for a bit and laughing.

“Did you ever climb on top of the monkey bars as a kid?” TJ asks Cyrus. Cyrus shoots him a look. “Have you met me? Ever? No way, never. My cousin broke his arm from falling off! You’ll never catch me doing that type of thing.” TJ laughs, he really had figured the answer was as such, but thought it was possible Buffy had forced him up there. “I’m gonna see if I still got it. Let’s see, how did I used to do that..”

TJ tries a few methods to get on top of the monkey bars to no avail. At one point, his phone slips from his pocket and on to the woodchips below. He’s too focused on trying to climb up to notice what had happened. Cyrus takes one look at TJ’s face, scrunched up in determination, and knows what he has to do. He darts under TJ and grabs his phone, then slyly angles it so that he can zoom way in and get a very awkward picture of TJ with his brow furrowed and his bottom lip between his teeth. TJ remains unaware and totally focused on somehow getting on top of the bars.

Cyrus is ready to finish the deed and set the picture as TJ’s homescreen when he notices something. The current homescreen isn’t just a nature picture, as he’d thought before. It’s a picture of the park. Specifically, it’s a picture of the swings-with Cyrus on them. He’s just a tiny blip on the screen, such that anyone else wouldn’t be able to tell who was on the swings, but Cyrus recognizes his light green shirt and bright white shoes, the same one he has on right now. He stares at the picture and then notices something he missed before- very, very faintly, so faint he almost didn’t believe his eyes-was a line that TJ must have added to the picture in photoshop. It wasn’t a line, really. It was a heart. TJ had taken a picture of him on the swings and drawn a heart around him, then set it as his background. It all took so much time to process, that by the time he did, TJ was sitting comfortably on top of the monkey bars, looking down at him. And in that moment-Cyrus just knew.

“How did you get up there?” He asks TJ, urgently. “Why?” TJ asks. He’s clearly nervous, and deciding not to say anything about the fact he just saw Cyrus staring at his phone.

“I need to get up there.” Cyrus tells him. “I have something I need to do.”

“You’re not too scarred?” TJ asks.

“No. I was for a while. I’m not anymore.” Cyrus replies confidently.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow can't believe I wrote something from a prompt generator, haha, but I'm glad I did, it was so fun! thank you so much to everyone who reads this!
> 
> also I just kinda wanna say that I feel like I really gloss over their whole deep conversation but I just felt weird writing about that topic as a girl. so i hope that didn't feel too rushed! (so why not pick a different topic for them to talk about? I dont know!!!!!!)
> 
> ANYWAY, thank you again, please let me know how you feel down in the comments! :)


End file.
